Much has happened in the nearly four years since her last release, "The Best Damn Thing" -- she divorced the Sum 41 guy, and a new crop of women singers popped up -- but Lavigne still sounds like the teen who broke through with sassy pop/rock almost a decade ago. The music landscape has changed, and if the 26-year-old Canadian singer is going to climb back into the picture with "Goodbye Lullaby," she'll be the elder stateswoman among such dynamos as Taylor Swift (21), Ke$ha (24) and Lady Gaga (24).

Yet Lavigne's sound is dated, her voice is immature and her themes are mostly vapid and unappealingly morose. On the anthemic "What the Hell," she re-harnesses her former buoyancy in a jaunt reminiscent of her hit "Girlfriend." And then, collapse. "Goodbye Lullaby" struggles to find its groove or its character. "Smile" turns upside down with an awkward rhythm. "Push" and "Everybody Hurts" are formulaic, and Lavigne, who doesn't convey any emotional heft, is both shrill and hokey on "I Love You" and "4 Real."

CHUCK CAMPBELL, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

Lykke Li, "Wounded Rhymes" (Atlantic)

There are femme fatales, and then there's the character the Swedish singer Li plays in her demented Spector-pop single "Get Some." "Like a shotgun needs an outcome, I'm your prostitute -- you're gonna get some," she warns in a glassy, deadpan coo. Rarely has a come-on been packed with so much menace. But Li's beguiling second album is full of charged contradictions. She's a mediocre singer with a very interesting voice, a fan of classic handmade pop and the ways laptops can serrate it, and a writer obsessed with sex and with sexing up obsession.

On the strength of her excellently minimalist early single "Little Bit," Li was often wrongly tagged as an electronic artist. "Wounded Rhymes" is made of shards of machines, yet is structured like R&B and pre-Beatles pop. Marianne Faithfull and Nancy Sinatra are her most ready vocal comparisons, but the sounds are otherworldly. "I Follow Rivers" is built off an in vogue distorted kalimba and detached vocal harmonies, while "Rich Kid Blues" gets its eeriness from a horror-show synthesizer. When the doom and gloom part, as on "Love Out of Lust," she conjures the ghosts of a hundred "-ettes" bands, and the effect is heavenly.

AUGUST BROWN, LOS ANGELES TIMES

Dropkick Murphys, "Going Out in Style"

On their seventh album, the Boston septet's hearts are as big as their mouths. The group barrels its way through 13 tracks that feature the signature stew of punk, rock, folk and Irish sounds and familiar themes including the bonds of family -- whether that comes in the form of insane but lovable relatives or union brothers standing in solidarity.

This time, there's a conceptual framework laid over the proceedings in the tale of the dearly departed, and fictional, Cornelius Larkin. The various stages of his life are chronicled in song, but like many concept albums, one needn't understand every plot point to enjoy this CD. Instead, you can dig into the sometimes delicate, sometimes furious banjo and bagpipe pas de deux, the deliriously tortured barks of Al Barr and Ken Casey, and the relentless rhythms that power the enterprise.

SARAH RODMAN, BOSTON GLOBE